| Abstract Scope |
High fidelity thermal multi-phase flow simulations are in much demand to reveal the multi-scale and multi-physics phenomena in metal additive manufacturing (AM) processes, yet accurate and robust predictions remain challenging. In this paper, we present a novel computational framework by mixing interface-capturing/interface-tracking methods for simulating the thermal multi-phase flows in metal AM applications, focusing on better handling the gas-metal interface, where AM physics, such as phase transitions and laser-material interaction, mainly takes place. The framework, built on the level set method and variational multi-scale formulation (VMS), features three major contributions:
1. A simple computational geometry-based re-initialization approach, which maintains excellent signed distance property on unstructured meshes, re-constructs an explicit representation of gas-metal interface from the level set, and facilitates the treatment of the multiple laser reflections during keyhole evolution in AM processes. |